Silhouettes
by Burning 'Til There's Dark Blue
Summary: Six months after a pathogen destroys the US, Peter and Olivia remain trapped in the Dominican Republic amidst the gunfights and renegade soldiers. And the one person who can help them could very easily kill them, what with the AK-47 and all. HIATUS
1. Chapter 1: The War Was Always There

**Disclaimer: **I do not own anything copyrighted.

*~*~*

_"In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore."_

_~In Another Country by Ernest Hemingway~_

It was less than a year after the explosion that destroyed half of the United States. There were millions dead, half from the pathogen, half from the explosion meant to _kill _those infected by the pathogen. With the majority of the world dead for one reason or another, those who survived had to fight for food and survival.

We were in the Dominican Republic at the time of the blast, sent there to find a woman who had disappeared with no warning to her fiancée, coworkers, or family, aside from one eerily haunting sentence – "They're coming."

Isabella Esposito had disappeared off the face of the earth less than a week before the first person was infected by the pathogen, and it was her disappearance that let us survive. New England, especially Boston, was, for all intents and purposes, a Dead Zone.

The Dominican Republic was deep inside the Hot Zone, the name the government had come up with for the area affected still by disease and radiation from the bombs. We knew that unless they had gone on a random road trip to Central America to find who knows what, the people we left behind were dead or dying.

Beyond hope.

I was walking through the nearly empty streets, Olivia glued to my side, when the gunshots began. I reacted quickly, grabbing Olivia's wrist and dragging her into the nearest building. In the darkness, I could barely make out the blonde-haired woman's silhouette, but I could hear her ragged breathing and I knew what that meant – she had been hit in the firefight.

In the dark I couldn't see the extent of her injuries, so I waited several minutes for the firefight to stop, praying that she wouldn't die of exsanguination before I picked the blonde up and carried her out the back door into the boiling sun.

The bullet wound was in her left side, probably lodged in a rib by the looks of it. I would have tried to patch up the wound myself, but my hands were both shaking and covered in the fine brown sand that covered everything around me.

I looked up to see another woman – this one with brown-black hair – standing a the edge of the alley. She was wearing black jeans, a black trench coat, motorcycle gloves, a white t-shirt, steel-toed boots, and Men in Black-esque sunglasses. In one hand she held a police issue SIG Sauer, in the other, an AK-47 that looked like something straight out of the Soviet Union.

I froze, not because of the weapons, but because I recognized the renegade woman instantly as Isabella Esposito.

*~*~*

**A/N: **I come up with very strange stuff in my Creative Writing class. The story was supposed to be based off a line from one of Hemingway's stories. And you see, I've been on this whole post-apocalyptic war streak, and I've been watching way too much Fringe, so here's the start of a very short story, at least on my terms.


	2. Chapter 2: Get Busy Living

**A/N: **Prepare yourself for way too many Zombieland references and crappy Spanish.

*~*~*

_Get busy living, or get busy dying._

_~Stephen King~_

*~*~*

Isabella put the SIG back into her jacket and aimed the AK-47 at Olivia and I, most likely concerned with her own safety. She walked with a sense of authority that a doctor – well, intern - from Boston wouldn't be expected to have, crossing the 50-foot alley in just a few seconds, practically gliding across the ground. Her first words to me were in Spanish, with an inexplicable accent that I recognized from the videos I had seen, a mix of Italy and New York, which changed the way her Spanish sounded.

"_¿Quién son usted y porqué son usted en mi ciudad?" _She asked, a look of incredulity on her face. I was still frozen, unsure of what I was supposed to say.

"Isabella?" I asked, not bothering to answer the question. "You're Isabella Esposito."

She was silent for a full minute, apparently trying to decide whether I was a threat or not – though I was unarmed and she probably had about 50 knives and guns in the pockets of the trench coat, not to mention the assault rifle she had aimed at me – before she finally answered.

"Who is it that is asking; you or another man?" her accent was thicker when she spoke English.

"Both. I'm asking on behalf of the man you left behind when you came here. Jacob."

She paused again, biting her lip.

"Who are you, then?"

"Peter Bishop."

She was silent again, but she lowered the gun. I gave a sigh of relief. Being shot was not on my list of things to do after the apocalypse.

"I know you from somewhere." She looked at Olivia in obvious concern. "She is wounded."

The formality in which Isabella spoke was unfamiliar, yet refreshing in a way. It had been almost two years since I heard anybody - especially a renegade Italian immigrant - speak English.

"She was shot in the firefight a few minutes ago." I explained. "I'm guessing you were part of the fight."

"I was shooting the people who were trying to kill you." She looked at Olivia again. "I can help her. Follow me."

It went against all my better instincts than to follow a woman who for all I knew would shoot me the moment we were out of the city limits, but then I remembered that she was a doctor, and so reluctantly, I followed.

*~*~*

Isabella was a ghost, darting in and out of shadows and buildings, making it nearly impossible for me to follow her, and when you added in the fact that I was carrying Olivia, and then I was luck that I could even find her. More than once I walked past the building where she was, and she would grab my arm to pull me into the building before running forward.

It was in this way, for the most part, that we managed to get from the former supermarket to the abandoned hospital, and for some reason Isabella decided it would save much more time to walk in almost a complete straight line, cutting through buildings. A mile-long run took about seven minutes with the renegade leading the way.

I was running slower; asthma tends to make it really hard to run at what I figured was about 12 mph – Isabella was running at least 19 mph, but she would have to stop every couple of seconds to wait for me.

The fifth time I stopped was when she started to get really annoyed.

"First rule of Zombieland, idiot: Cardio. In other words, run faster or I'll shoot you."

I rolled my eyes at the reference, gasping for breath and sinking down to the ground, still holding Olivia, and leaned against the wall.

"You've been here longer…" I gasped, "and gotten used to… the running around all renegade soldier."

She frowned, then walked out, but not before handing me a gun.

"What are you doing?"

"Stay here." She ordered.

Two minutes later, a red Hummer – why there was a Hummer in the Dominican Republic, I will probably never know - crashed through the window and squealed to a stop in front of me.

The window rolled down and I looked up at the smiling Italian.

"I found a car." She stated calmly.

I stood up, my legs feeling like jelly from the running full-speed through Santo Domingo while carrying a 120 lb human who at this point was basically dead weight, and carried Olivia over to the car. Isabella got out of the driver's seat to open up the door to the backseat. "You can ride shotgun." She said as I placed the still-unconscious blonde in the backseat.

*~*~*

I have been through a lot of terrifying crap since I started working for the Fringe Division, but this topped the list.

I learned three things in the 15 minutes it took to drive to the abandoned hospital.

First: having a 24-year-old who probably didn't get her license until she became a citizen at 19 years old and who has severe anger management issues when it comes to other people drive a Hummer through the streets of Santo Domingo, especially when said streets are filled with abandoned vehicles while there is a severely injured woman in the backseat who you have to keep from getting even more severely injured by the car ride is like being on a roller coaster in Cedarville, Ohio while having a completely plastered and stoned 80-year-old man with Alzheimer's at the controls. In other words, it's scary as hell.

Second: If there is an abandoned Hostess truck that is probably filled with food, even if the aforementioned 24-year-old is driving at 75 mph, she will slam on the brakes just to see if there is any food in the truck. If there is, she will drag you out of the car and have you help her carry giant boxes filled with various forms of junk food to the Hummer and put in the trunk.

Third: Isabella Esposito is way too big a fan of _Zombieland, _and will mention every single one of the rules while you are driving to the abandoned hospital, all while eating and driving at 75 mph.

I was praying by the time we got to the hospital, mostly because we had nearly died at least 27 times – not that I was counting – on the ride to the hospital.

Somehow, miraculously, we pulled up in front of the hospital, and I got out of the car as quickly as I could before half-collapsing on the ground, glad to be back on solid earth.

"Are you alright?" the thickly accented voice that was now familiar asked.

"You aren't allowed to drive me anywhere ever again." I said, at the moment praying that I wouldn't have to do anything that required vehicular travel anytime in the next 10 years.

"Okay." I heard the retreating footsteps, and moments later the sound of plastic wheels on concrete, which caused me to look up from my suddenly very comfortable position in the middle parking lot. Isabella had returned, this time with a gurney.

"Please tell me you aren't planning to do surgery." I begged.

"I'm a doctor. What do you expect me to do, let her die?" Isabella asked, wheeling the gurney up to the passenger door and opening it. I stood up and walked over.

There was a surprisingly large amount of blood in the backseat, but Olivia was still breathing.

"I believe the bullet may have hit her spleen. But considering the fact that she is still alive, I don't believe that it was punctured. The bullet must be lodged in there." Isabella observed, sitting on the divider between the driver's seat and the passenger seat as she tried to pick Olivia up without causing any more damage.

*~*~*

Putting Olivia on the gurney was more trouble than it should have been, but 3 minutes later we succeeded.

"Drive the car into the parking garage and get all the guns. I have to go prepare for surgery." Isabella ordered, wheeling the gurney away. I raised an eyebrow; the completely insane woman who had just tried to kill me was about to perform emergency surgery on the person I was trying to keep alive. But you couldn't really argue with someone who had about 50 guns with them.

*~*~*

**A/N: Review? Please?**


	3. Author's Note

**A/N: To anyone reading Let Love In, Inhumanity, Epsilon, and/or Silhouettes.**

**Due to reasons beyond my understanding, my parents have not only taken away my radio, iPod, TV, cell phone, the majority of my computer time, and anything else technological that they can think of, but today I learned that they blocked every single website on my account. Not only this, but they are also deleting the guest account on the computer. Therefore, until my grades are back to passing (according to my mom, above 95% because I'm "in gifted classes and should apply myself", I will be unable to update anything.**

**It is not my fault. My parents are being douche bags, and do not understand that I am not mentally capable of normal school.**

**I will update as soon as I can, but for now will probably be completely unable to update unless I can go to the library – a highly unlikely event, get a laptop – also very unlikely, or get a hold of either Gabby's, Katie's, or Bruce's computer to write. But seeing as I am pretty much grounded, even this note is really hard to write because they're deleting this account.**

**For now, all my stories are on indefinite hiatus. Y'all have absolutely no idea how mad and upset I am that I'm not being allowed to write. Not only can I not listen to music, but I'm not being allowed to write now, either.**

**I'm extremely, ridiculously sorry. You have no idea how much of a bitch I feel like for doing this, even though it's not my fault.**

**~Sarah**


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